6 Best Android Tablets of 2012

3. Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (from $499)

This tablet is top-quality, with a 10.1-inch screen with a 1280x800 resolution display, a 1.4GHz Exynos quad core processor, a choice of 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of storage, a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera, a 1.9 megapixel front-facing camera, and a 100hour battery pack.

It runs on Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" but there's an upgrade path to Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean". It comes with a stylus called the S Pen specifically designed to work with a number of applications.

4. Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch (from $299)

The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD comes with a 1920x1200 resolution, 1080p (HD) display with in-plane switching, Advanced True Wide (ATW) polarizing filter, and 10-point multi-touch support.

Storage options are 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB, but there's no micro-SD card slot.

The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD is powered by the latest generation dual-core 1.5GHz OMAP4 4470 processor with an on-board Imagination SGX544 graphics engine that's capable of over 12 billion floating point operations per second -- or 50 percent more than Nvidia's Tegra 3 processor.

Also inside is a dual antenna design for better reception, dual-band 2.4GHz and 5 GHz WI-Fi and MIMO (Multiple In/Multiple Out) that offers higher bandwidth and longer range.